Experiment with Conaor. 117 



and seemed to go off into a gentle sleep. It, unfortunately, died 

 on the following day — perhaps through fretting for its Italian 

 nurse — and its body then came into my hands as a zoological 

 specimen. 



Dr. Fenton, whose acquaintance we had made on our first visit 

 just a year previously, was still residing at Sandy Point as medical 

 officer of the settlement, and, with great good nature, put his 

 house and horses at our disposal. He .told me of an experiment 

 he had been trying on the flying powers of a condor, which 

 had been caught alive. He perforated the quills of the wing 

 and tail feathers, so as to allow the ingress and egress of air, 

 and on then throwing the bird up in the air found that it could 

 neither fly nor soar. The inference is that the bird derives its 

 buoyancy in a great measure from the formation of a vacuum 

 in the quills of these feathers, and consequently, on air being 

 admitted, the flapping of the wings, unaided by the buoyancy 

 derived from the rarefied air, was insufficient either to raise 

 or support the bird's weight. If this theory be correct, it is 

 probable that the mechanism by which this vacuum is produced 

 is actuated by the wing muscles, which thus discharge a twofold 

 office. 



From the 13th of January to the 25th of March, after leaving 

 Sandy Point, we proceeded to the western part of Magellan 

 Straits, where we were for about nine weeks, occupied in making 

 additions to the old surveys, principally in the narrow and tortuous 

 part of the Strait which is called the "Crooked Reach." The 

 scenery here is remarkably fine, and on a dry clear day — an event, 

 however, of rare occurrence — one can fully realize the truth of old 

 Pigafetta's remark, that "there is not in the world a more beautiful 

 country, or better strait, than this one." 



We made several stays, each of a day's duration, at Tilly Bay, 

 a small land-locked anchorage on the north shore of Santa Ines 

 Island, and immediately opposite to the mouth of the Jerome 

 Channel, which leads into the Otway water. At the head of the 



